


Through the Ages, Across Worlds

by FeatherWriter



Category: Cosmere - Brandon Sanderson, Stormlight Archive - Brandon Sanderson
Genre: (could be read as meet cute or just friends), Also reincarnation is still within the cosmere, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, F/M, Fluff, Friendship, Shallarin, meet cute
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-08
Updated: 2017-06-08
Packaged: 2018-11-10 18:15:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11132169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FeatherWriter/pseuds/FeatherWriter
Summary: A fluffy reincarnation fic, written as part of a Valentines Day challenge, of Renarin Kholin and Shallan Davar meeting in various worlds and lives throughout the cosmere.





	Through the Ages, Across Worlds

**Author's Note:**

> Reincarnation’s not a trope that I work with very often, but this one turned out all right I think. Even though this one was written for Valentines day, it’s a lot more “meet cute” than “romance” and it can definitely be read somewhat platonically if you prefer that.

In every life, Renarin can see.

Perhaps it is an extension of those powers he held long ago, following him through the ages. In some iterations, he is a Truthwatcher, blessed with the full powerset. But not always. Sometimes he’s lighteyed, though rarely is he as highborn as when he’s the third dahn son of a highprince. Sometimes he’s darkeyed, a commoner. Sometimes he is in the middle. A low-dahn craftsman. A high-nahn worker.

There are rare times when he isn’t on Roshar anymore, and those always feel odd to him. Some part of him thinks that he isn’t supposed to remember the other worlds he’s been on, but he can. He can sense the others who have seen worlds sometimes, the gleam in the eyes that says they know too much. Worlds of metal and mist, sounds and colors, silver and shadows in the night. But none feel like Roshar. No others feel like home to him.

In one such life, he found an organization, Seventeenth Shard, and managed to find his way back to Roshar for the first time when being born on a different world. He wondered, perhaps, once he found out about the Shards, if one of them were toying with him. Snatching him from the cognitive realm and forcing him back to the physical, keeping the Beyond tantalizingly out of reach.

He’d thought that on Nalthis he might have figured out what was happening to him. But the more he looked, the more disappointing his findings were. No, he was no Returned. And this was not Endowment’s game being played. Something else kept him flitting through the cosmere, one life to the next.

He likes the lives in which his epilepsy isn’t as bad, though it’s always there. In some of the later lives, the medical world has caught up and there are ways to alleviate the worst of the symptoms. He still feels like he thinks differently from the rest of the people around him, though, but later lives begin to recognize and validate even that side of him. Neuroatypical. He likes it when the lives give him a word for it, it makes it feel real and valid, rather than something he’s feared he made up.

No matter where or when or how he lives however, he can always see. He can always remember. Somehow, sooner or later, the lives of the past come back to him.

Early on, he thought he was mad, his mind broken each time he would remember something from before. Surely, it didn’t seem as though other people could remember other lives they’d lived. Perhaps no one else _did_ live other lives, and he was alone in this.

Or so he’d thought until he’d realized there was a constant between these threads of life. She looked different, each time. Her name was different too, but then again, so was his. It was many lives down the line before he realized he could recognize her: the Lightweaver from his first life. She’d been Shallan then. Did she still think of herself as Shallan, as he still thought of himself as Renarin? He wondered.

He doubted, the first few times they met, if it could really be her. A spark of wit, a smile hiding scars, an artist’s eye, each time. Surely there were others in the cosmere with such talents. But after a while, he grew more sure. It was the instant familiarity. The feeling of an old friend, even upon the first time they’d meet.

Of course, after he’d recognized her, there was a swath of lives where he couldn’t quite bring himself to say anything. After all, yes, though they’d eventually become friends in that first life so long ago, it had been a difficult road. The Everstorm had been taxing upon them all, but he still shied back, remembering what had happened. She and he, they didn’t quite click. There was tension at first, dissonance. It had hurt. In most of the lives, he feared being pulled back to a place like that if he said anything.

Even after the fear of a disastrous first meeting passed, there were lives when Renarin couldn’t work up the nerve to bridge the gap. Lives upon lives of experience, and it felt like he had no more confidence than he’d begun with. People were still confusing and difficult to interact with. Shouldn’t it have gotten easier the more experience he got with it?

Eventually, curiosity got the better of him. What if she remembered too? If it really was her, did she recognize him? Did she also send glances askance through their lives circling the cosmere, wondering if she ought to say something too? There were a few passing conversations between them, sometimes where they even worked together closely for a while, but he had trouble finding the nerve to ask if she was like him. If she _knew_ , like he did.

It’s on a subway on Scadrial when the question is finally broached. She’s wrapped up in a sweater and scarf against the winter weather, with carrying her textbooks from the Elendel University. Art history, from before and after the Catacendre. He has his own books too, though there’s still that little bit of Vorin sensibility that feels odd reading. He likes it though. Perhaps he would have been a good ardent, so long ago, after all.

Renarin’s watched her from afar, of course. They even have some classes together in this life.

But he didn’t notice her coming up to take the seat beside him that day. He hears his name in this life, and turns, jumping slightly when he recognizes the voice and the face she has this time.

“I… yes?” After so long, his voice still shakes, just a bit.

Her eyes search his, and there’s a depth to her gaze that doesn’t match the levity of her tone. “Sorry to bother you, but I’ve been trying to find a way to talk to you for some time,” she says, giving a reassuring smile. “It’s just, I know I’ve seen you around the university, but there’s something that keeps catching me about you. Do we know each other from somewhere?”

Renarin blinks, surprised. _She can’t actually be asking…_ He feels he oughtn’t be surprised that  it took him too long to say something. Still, there’s almost something embarrassing that she’d be the first one to make a move. “Well… we might? Elendel is fairly big but…”

“But the cosmere’s smaller than you’d think, isn’t it?” Those blue eyes of hers are piercing, as though demanding truth from him. They need answers. _Her eyes were blue the first time, weren’t they?_

He summons what feels like every ounce of determination he has and finds within the depths of past memories the syllables to say the name. “Shallan?” It’s not the name she has now. It’s not a Scadrian name at all, and his tongue, so used to Scadrian languages, feels odd pronouncing this word from ages past and worlds away.

Something seems to _click_ within her, eyes widening just a fraction, the barest hint of a breath released. And then her calculatedly reassuring smile melts into something more genuine. “Renarin? So it is you…”

Then he feels it for himself, the rightness of hearing that name, a name he hasn’t heard spoken in lifetimes. But it’s _him_ , and she knows _who he is_. Some of that nervous anxiety sloughs away, and he relaxes in a way that he hasn’t known for eons. Someone knows. Someone understands. Someone else remembers.

Someone else _sees._

“I can’t believe it,” he breathes. “After all this time.”

She smiles again, eyes alight in wonder. “I feel like we have quite a bit of catching up to do, don’t you think?”


End file.
